Chapter Fourteen #2
I learned so many things in that first hour, including how every day started with Alan playing the piano while Ben led a song called “The Camp Firefly Shake,” which half the kids already knew, and the others read from a giant scroll.
I sang quietly, aware of how long it had been since I’d sung aloud with a group.
Probably drunken karaoke at a cast party.
By the end of the refrain, I got into the spirit and sang with gusto, smiling at everyone around me, catching Ben’s eyes as he belted out the last line.
He held the final word—loooove—and the popular girl clique sang it in four-part harmonies, doing all the musical theatre Mariah Carey–esque tricks with
their voices. I was in awe. He ended the line with a clap. Then he winked right at me. Neve and Allegra both looked at me,
and then back at Ben. Neve with an aha, I thought so kind of look. What a whirlwind this summer might turn out to be.
While the campers did improv, I helped myself to a coffee from the urn on the bar and brought my laptop out to the patio.
I tried to turn off the part of my brain that said things like If you film this in Sudbury, you’ll get a great tax break and will likely sell it easier. Other thoughts interrupted my flow as well, like how maybe Alan could play the fisherman dad character and some of the kids
could get their first day-player roles.
I loved my group of aspiring writers immediately. I initiated a go-around where we said our names and pronouns, and our favourite
movie.
There was one boy, Jimmy, who was the youngest (Donnie Darko).
Then Becca (Wicked), Lauren (Wicked), Malia (Twilight, which she prefaced by calling it “super old but still good”—kill me), and Emily (Booksmart)—all of whom were fifteen or so, and thus not yet bursting with the sixteen-year-old confidence of Hailey, who was stone-faced
and sullen, occasionally making possibly mocking remarks and gazing over toward where her friends were belting out songs or
stomping out dances on the hall floor. Hailey’s favourite movie was I Saw the TV Glow. She was not impressed by my being impressed, just looked longingly across at her friends through the open doors of the hall.
“Hailey,” I finally said, “it’s not too late to change your mind and go back to music and dance, I will not be offended. It’s
your summer!”
“No,” she said, turning from teen girl to serious adult, “I am very serious about having a career in this business. And I
am aware of how hard it is to get acting gigs if you don’t have it and a lot of luck. I don’t come from a lucky family. My face isn’t quite symmetrical enough. I need to learn how to do all
aspects—like, I did lighting and scenery in drama club at school, I taught myself how to edit film on YouTube, and I’ve been
studying dance and acting since I was six—so learning to write is my next goal. I love reading. And I figure plays and movies,
none of them exist without the writing, right?”
“Exactly,” I said, and she finally offered me a genuine smile. “You don’t get the big solos or immediate attention, but you
get to control what everyone says and does. It’s a rush! And it’s really so much fun. I’m hoping that by the end of summer,
you guys will have a real taste of what it’s like to write movies or a short one-act play or monologue. It’s difficult. But
it’s very creatively rewarding.”
Hailey took in everything I said. I realized I’d been exactly like her when I went to a theatre day camp at fifteen. Everyone
else was having fun. But I had a mission. I worried about what might be going on at home with Hailey that she was so serious
right now about her career, when she could just be having a good time being young.
Then she asked me what I would be asked by almost every camper that summer.
“So, do you know any casting directors?”
Of course I knew many casting directors. But I did what I knew I needed to do. I shook my head no.
But I loved how seriously everyone was taking the workshop.
Even Jimmy, the thirteen-year-old who still looked about ten.
When I asked him what he would like to write, I expected him to say a script for SpongeBob or a comedy sketch.
Instead, he said, “I would like to write a play starring Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, only he’s time travelled to now and has to go to the first day of eighth grade and, like, blend in and make friends. ” I
had never heard anything so perfectly whimsical and said so.
Lunch came quick.
I took a cheese sandwich and a bowl of barley soup from the lunch buffet on offer and sat down between Alan and Neve. I was
relaxed now that teaching was over. I needed a long nap and was positively starving. How did people actually teach teenagers
all day long? They were saints. Allegra and Noah each sat at one of the camper tables, making sure no one vaped or started
fights, I suppose. I glanced at the popular clique group, I called them the Heathers in my mind. Their plates were filled
with dressing-free salad and chicken cold cuts. Some things never change, I thought sadly.
“How did it go? Small group, eh?” asked Neve. I got an immediate vibe that she was hoping my workshop had been terrible.
“I love my group. It’s better to have an intimate number of people, we can really go deeper. They’re so smart and talented,
I feel quite lucky. Some of the exercises I prepared were for kids who were much less talented.”
“Firefly kids are special,” said Ben, sitting down with his own heaping plate of salad and cold cuts. At least his had dressing,
but I briefly worried about how our eating might be seen by the kids. “It has a very good reputation for being a real drama
camp, you know? Our parents really took building its reputation seriously.”
The walls behind the table were covered in poster boards of photographs from the eighties on. There was one of their mother holding Ben as a baby while on stage. Then a big photo of Ben at about age fifteen, on stage with another boy, around which people had written condolences.
“Who was that?”
“That’s Damon. Ben’s best friend as a kid,” said Neve.
“What happened?”
“He died at a party. Real tragedy,” said Alan.
Neve and Ben both looked down at their plates and didn’t offer anything else .
“That’s awful.”
No one spoke until Hailey and one of the popular girls stood up and started singing one of those camp songs where you bang
on the table. Someone threw a potato. It was chaos.
I drove home and went right in the lake, this time wearing my Crocs so I wouldn’t have to touch anything gross. Then I took
a long nap. I basically did this all week, until Thursday, when my nap was interrupted by Rush and the sound of renovations.
I wished Dave and I could talk it through. I sat up and thought of an idea to break the ice.